Kevin Akalski joined Baylor University’s Political Science PhD Program in 2023. He graduated summa cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts with a double major in philosophy and political science. At Baylor, his fields of study are political philosophy and American politics, and his research focuses on classical political philosophy and the American Founding.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
— The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America
This year, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has occasioned much reflection on America’s natural rights philosophy, and rightfully so. The first two paragraphs of the document contain some of the inspiring prose ever written concerning the foundations of free government, and the final paragraph reminds us of the sacrifices required for the defense of liberty: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Historical events subsequent to the Declaration attest to its importance for American political life. Lincoln immortalized the Declaration in his Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The document inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Women, written by Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony in 1876, the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. And in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his “I Have a Dream” speech that the Founders signed a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” a promissory note that he and his fellow black Americans rightfully sought to cash.
Yet, the Constitution seems to lack the aura possessed by the Declaration of Independence. With the possible exception of the Preamble, the Constitution reads much more like an instruction manual than a treatise on political philosophy. Law professors may enjoy debating whether the difference between, on one hand, Article I’s vesting clause — “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States” — and, on the other hand, Article II’s vesting clause — “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” — entails a difference in the extent of each branch’s authority, but many an undergraduate’s eyes will glaze over during such debates.
Perhaps, however, this facet of the Constitution is one of its great advantages. A prosaic Constitution might be exactly what a rights-loving, democratic people needs. The Constitution may prove to be a moderating influence on Americans’ revolutionary spirit, and this moderation could well be in the spirit of the Declaration itself. As the Declaration states, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes[.]” Moreover, none other than Abraham Lincoln imagined the Constitution as “the picture of silver” that serves as the frame for the Declaration, the “apple of gold.” The sometimes boring procedures specified in the Constitution protect the rights of the Declaration.
This fall semester, I find myself teaching an undergraduate course on American national government, and this week we turned from a study of the revolutionary origins of America to the country’s experiment in self-government. The success of the Revolution in no way guaranteed the future success of the United States. We would do well to remember the words of Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 1: “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”
Since the week that my course covers our nation’s first attempt at self-government turned out to be the same week that we celebrate Constitution Day, I figured that I would take the opportunity to share some thoughts about the Constitution’s Preamble in light of the concerns of the Founders and their experience under the Articles of Confederation, the document that served as our constitution from 1781 until the Constitution went into effect in 1789.
The Preamble begins with an appeal to “We the People of the United States.” While the Constitution needed to be ratified by nine states to go into effect, the document is clear that it derives its origins from an act of the people. By contrast, compare Article II of the Articles of Confederation: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence[.]” Whereas the Articles of Confederation left us with a conglomerate of sovereign states, the Constitution roots its authority in the American people.
For what end are the American people acting? The first reason given by the Preamble is “in Order to form a more perfect Union[.]” Again, compare the Articles of Confederation, where Article III tells us that the “states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their Liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.”
That the Articles establish a “firm league of friendship” among the states means that the bond among them was more or less a mere alliance. An alliance is a contract that details the terms of cooperation for parties with a common interest. However, if it should occur that the parties no longer perceive the alliance to be in their interest, then there would be no compelling reason for them to continue that alliance. There would be no reason that could keep the parties united. The Constitution, however, is not a mere alliance. Rather than leave each state sovereign within its own domain, the Constitution unifies us under a federal government whose laws “made in Pursuance” of the Constitution’s goals are, in the words of Article VI, “the supreme Law of the Land.”
Besides union, the Preamble lists other goods to be obtained by the Constitution. The Constitution will “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity[.]”
As is well known, the central government established by the Articles of Confederation was very weak. In fact, the government consisted of only one branch, and the only powers that this branch could exercise were legislative in nature. There was no system of federal courts, and even more crucially, there was no federal body authorized to wield the executive power. The laws under the Articles had no teeth, and this weakness of the Articles meant that when a group of farmers in Massachusetts rebelled against high taxes, the central government had no power to put the rebellion down. Instead, it had to be stopped by Massachusetts militias. The ineptitude of the central government in ending this rebellion — known as Shays’s Rebellion — was one of the chief reasons for the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Another problem experienced by the United States in the 1780s was our inability to collect money to pay back our Revolutionary War debts. For under the Articles, the central government could only request money from the states. Moreover, in Federalist 15 Hamilton argues that the “great and radical vice” of the Articles was the fact that its laws were binding on the states as a whole rather than on the individuals of whom those states were made up. The problem with this manner of legislating, Hamilton explains, is that states cannot be incentivized to promote the common interest like individuals can. For example, an individual who breaks the law can be put in jail, whereas a state, of course, cannot be. And without enforceable penalties for disobeying the laws, Hamilton contends that the laws no longer deserve the name “laws.” Rather, he tells us that they are “nothing more than advice or recommendation.” No wonder, then, that our nation’s finances were in severe distress under the Articles.
But if an overly weak government failed to meet our needs, would Americans ultimately have to sacrifice their newly won liberties on the altar of political necessity? Not so. The Founders figured out that — in a well-designed constitution — strong government and free government need not be in tension with each other. Instead, a strong government is the prerequisite to a free government that can meet the goals laid out in the Constitution’s Preamble. To (yet again) cite Hamilton: “the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty” (Federalist 1). If we are to enjoy our rights, then government needs to be empowered to protect them.
Contemporary scholars like Jeffrey Tulis have shown that the Founders empowered our government by structuring each branch to be effective at its function or task. As Tulis states in the second chapter of his book The Rhetorical Presidency, “The term ‘separation of powers’ perhaps has obstructed understanding of the extent to which different structures were designed to give each branch the special quality needed to secure its governmental objectives.” And Tulis goes on to explain that the Founders gave Congress a bicameral structure to provide the conditions for — if not the guarantee of — deliberation among representatives. Moreover, Tulis contends, the Founders gave the president “unity, the prospect of reelection, and substantial discretion” so that he would be an effective enforcer of the laws, and they structured the judiciary “to make the dispassionate protection of rights more likely, if by no means certain.” For example, the Constitution states that federal judges are to serve during good behavior, which grants them significant independence from the ebbs and flows of everyday politics.
Two centuries later — and despite our country’s current polarization — our democracy remains intact, not least of all because our Founders learned from the failures of the Articles of Confederation by creating a Constitution where strong government and free government do not contradict each other. Although, then, the Constitution may lack the flair and pomp of the Declaration of Independence, we would do well this week to appreciate its clear-sighted rationality. The Declaration of Independence will always have its admirers, but we should never forget the silver frame that protects that apple of gold.